


Close of Day

by jouissant



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, First Time, M/M, Pinto Tropefest 2014, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 12:06:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1648061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two days before the world ends, Zachary Quinto sits in a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close of Day

**Author's Note:**

> [...] And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll slowly continually up the shores  
> I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as directed to me whispering to congratulate me,  
> For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,  
> In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was inclined toward me,  
> And his arm lay lightly around my breast – and that night I was happy. 
> 
> \--When I Heard at the Close of the Day, Walt Whitman

Two days before the world ends, Zachary Quinto sits in a bar. 

He figures that if they’re wrong, if the world doesn’t end, that that’ll make a pretty good first line. _Two days before the end of the world, a man sat in a bar._

He takes a sip of his drink and grimaces. Vodka on the rocks, because who needs mixers when the world’s ending. The TV above the bar is on. There’s a pallid anchor on the screen, sitting next to a wild-eyed man casting about in manic glee. 

“Repent!” he screams. “Repent!” The anchor stares at him like he’s speaking another language. The screaming man looks like he’s been up for days. He probably has; this is all that’s on. For the last week it’s either been the televangelists or CNN, overriding every broadcast with constant coverage. 

“Can we turn this off?” 

Zach cranes his neck to see who’s talking. He’s been here most of today without much change to the cast of characters. They’re men, all of them, except for the owner’s wife, a fifty-something dishwater blonde who stares at the TV and smokes until she breaks down crying and retreats to the back of the building, only to emerge after a few minutes and start the cycle over again. Zach thinks he could set his watch by it, if he was wearing one. 

The man who spoke is sitting at the bar, mounted on a stool with his legs spread wide the way businessmen do on trains. His hair is light brown, and Zach watches the place where it fades into the skin at the back of his neck. Zach can’t see his face.

The bartender isn’t listening. Zach gets up, drink in hand, and bellies up to the bar. He doesn’t look at the man. 

“Hey,” he says to the bartender, who’s chopping up limes off to the side, directly under the TV’s neon blare. “Hey!” 

The bartender looks up. 

“Can we change the channel?” 

The bartender looks at Zach, vague recognition on his face. Zach wonders if taking up residence in his corner booth before noon grants him status as a regular. The bartender nods, picks up the remote and slides it across the bar to Zach. 

“Knock yourself out,” he says. 

Zach points the remote and jams the power button instead. 

“Fuck, thank you,” says the man. “I thought I was going to go out of my mind.” 

Zach turns to look at him, and the man smiles. Zach’s fingers tighten around his glass. 

“No problem,” he says. “It was driving me kind of crazy too.” 

The man looks down, traces the mouth of his glass with a finger. There’s something amber in it; bourbon, Zach thinks, or whiskey. 

“You wanna sit?” the man asks. He’s young, around Zach’s age for sure, and looks like he should be doing anything but skulking around here.

Zach shrugs and takes up the next barstool. He takes a sip of his drink. “So,” he says. “You really think it’s going to happen?” That’s the question you ask, now. That’s the question everyone asks. 

The man sighs. “Nothing anyone can come up with that says it won’t,” he says. “I think we’re swimming out past the ropes here.” He seems less concerned about that than he has any right to be. “Hey, what’s your name?” he asks.

Zach’s hand is clammy from clutching his glass. He wipes it on his pants, then holds it out across the space between them. “Zach,” he says. 

“Chris.” He takes Zach’s hand and shakes; his own hand is big and warm and dry, faintly soothing. 

“I watched the news for a whole day when the story first broke,” Chris says. “I just...I just sat on my couch and watched it. I don’t know if I got up to eat or drink or take a piss. I didn’t sleep. I don’t know if that was better or worse; it all started feeling like a dream.” He shakes his head. “Anyway,” he says. “So, what’s your story? What are you doing in a shitty bar right now?” 

The bartender looks up at that, and Chris makes a _yikes_ face. Zach snorts. 

“What does anyone do in a shitty bar?” He raises his glass dramatically and toasts the empty air. “No, I don’t know. I’m--I’m an actor,” he says. “Or I was. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say is or was, you know? I had an audition tomorrow,” he says, taking a sip of vodka. “My first fucking audition in months, too. The director fucked off to some beach house in Brazil that’s supposed to be out of the blast radius. Like, good fucking luck with that, dude.” 

“Seriously,” Chris says. “My parents wanted to go up in the mountains somewhere. They were worried about a tsunami.” 

“Is that where they are?” 

He nods. “We have a place,” he says. “Up in Wyoming.” 

“Ooh, fancy,” Zach says. “How come you’re not there, then? I bet daddy’s got some badass, thousand-dollar bottles of wine to drink up before everything goes boom.” 

Chris winces in a way that lets Zach know the blow landed. 

“Hey, I’m an actor too,” he says in a let’s-change-the-subject voice. “How about that.” 

“Hmm,” Zach says. “Something tells me we’re not up for the same stuff. You been in anything I’d’ve seen?” 

“Uh, I doubt it. Unless you pay really close attention to beer commercials. But hey, I shot an episode of _E.R._ a few months ago. Something tells me it’s not going to air, though.” 

Zach drains his drink and elbows Chris until he follows suit. “You’re getting behind,” he says. He raises two fingers to the bartender. 

“Easy there,” Chris says. 

“Aw, come on,” Zach says. He’s spent the day ebbing and flowing between pleasantly buzzed and just plain drunk, and he’s working his way back again now. All of a sudden, he really doesn’t want to be alone. 

“One more, then.” 

“Chris, what does it say on that stupid doomsday clock, or whatever they’re calling it? There are like 46 hours left on that thing. Why the fuck do you think you’re sitting in a bar if not to get blazingly drunk? This is the definition of drinking to forget.”

“I don’t know,” Chris says. “Maybe I think there are more enjoyable things to do with my last couple days on earth than nurse a hangover.” He looks at Zach pointedly. 

Jesus, of all the places. This isn’t even a gay bar, not as such. A few months back Zach wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this. It was the kind of place he and his friends used to walk past on the way to the coffeeshop at 11 in the morning, watch some old guy amble in side and mime looks of concern. He can practically hear Moosa stage whispering “Depressing!” in a singsong as they all shuffle past, hung over and in need of grease but not, mind you, _like that_. Well, just look at Zach now.

Fuck it, then. “You’re cute,” Zach says.

Chris looks startled for a second, then smiles a slow smile that manages to beat back the sluggishness of the alcohol and make Zach’s stomach leap the way it hasn’t in who knows how long. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” he says. “I bet you could give me a run for my money on the casting couch after all.” 

“That’s the worst double entendre I’ve ever heard.”

***

“Let’s go to my place. I need to feed my cat,” Zach says in the parking lot. “I’ll bring you back to get your car tomorrow, if you want. Just, here, I’m too drunk.” He tosses his keys at Chris; he misses and Chris has to kneel on the asphalt to locate the keys in the shadow of the car.

“Shit,” Chris says, opening the driver’s side door and sliding in. “I never thought about that, people with pets and stuff.” 

Zach gets in himself, shaking his head as he does. “How about kids? How the fuck do you explain something like this to a kid?” 

They’re quiet after that. Zach watches the lights out his window as Chris drives. It’s not that late, well before last call and the streets should be busier, brighter. Black gaps like rotten teeth break the flow of lights where businesses are closed, shut down for the night or shut up for forever, boards sealed over windows and anointed with spray paint. Owners’ names and numbers, the occasional pithy warning: _YOU LOOT WE SHOOT._

“God bless America, right?” Chris says as he sees it. 

Zach swallows. For the first time today, he’s getting sober enough to feel afraid. “Turn right here,” he says. 

Zach’s complex is scarcely less quiet than the street. As they cross the courtyard he can hear the TV on in 3, and the baby in 5 is crying again. It’s not an unfamiliar sound, but tonight it feels like a harbinger, like an owl hooting or the scream of a crow. 

“Nice place,” says Chris, when they get inside. Harold is milling around them almost immediately, weaving in and out of Zach’s legs and mewling. 

“Whatever, it’s shitty,” Zach says over his shoulder as he goes to the pantry to retrieve Harold’s food. “Where do you live, anyway?” 

“Not too far, actually. I could probably walk it.” He looks at the door. 

“You planning on leaving?” Zach’s not sure what makes him ask. Maybe he’s just too tired and drunk and freaked to bother with anything but bluntness. 

“What? No,” Chris says. 

The look on his face has the kind of goodness in it that makes Zach want to apologize for every wrong thing he’s ever done. He shakes some cat food into Harold’s bowl and scratches him behind the ears as he hunches before it to eat. He straightens and opens the fridge, frowns at the mostly-empty shelves. Grocery stores, restaurants...things have been slowly shutting down as the days pass. Turns out the end of the world is kind of a pain in the ass in terms of procuring basic necessities. 

“You want a glass of water?” Zach asks. He takes a glass out of the cupboard.

“Are you okay?” Chris has come up behind him into the doorway of the kitchen, backlit by the lamp from living room. 

“Sure,” Zach says. 

“Your hands are shaking.” 

Zach sets the glass down on the counter and shoves his hands in his pockets. “What are you here for?” he asks. “Because--” 

Chris holds up a finger. The gesture sends a surge of anger through Zach-- _who the fuck are you to tell me to be quiet in my own fucking house_ \--but for some reason he shuts his mouth anyway. Chris steps across the little galley kitchen and right into Zach’s personal space. He reaches past him to take up the glass, leans closer to fill it from the sink. They stand there quietly, an inch apart, the only sounds their breathing and the running water. Chris smells faintly of cigarettes. He steps back, takes a long drink of water and puts the glass back on the counter. Then he tugs down the neck of Zach’s shirt with a fingertip and traces the hollow at the base of his throat. 

“This,” he says. 

Zach leans in and takes hold of the back of Chris’s neck, clutching at his hair. He doesn’t bother being gentle, just opens wide and takes Chris’s mouth, tongue taking a mile as soon as Chris gives any leeway at all. Chris lets his jaw slacken, lets Zach in to lick along the sharp ridges of his teeth, to bite at his plump, pink lower lip. Those lips--Zach pulls off and they shine faintly in the low light. He’s about to go back in for more when Chris reaches up and catches Zach’s face in his hands. Zach tries to toss his head, to get away, but Chris holds him firmly. Zach’s gaze darts up to his eyes and then they’re held too. Chris smiles at him, and there’s more of that earlier sweetness in it, and that’s...that’s not what Zach wants tonight at all. 

_Fucking figures,_ he thinks for the second time this evening. _Fucking figures you bring a decent guy back here tonight, Quinto, of all nights._

“You okay?” Chris asks again. He lets Zach’s face go and crosses his arms over his chest. 

Zach nods. He starts laughing, helpless little giggles, and he slumps against the counter. His eyes are watering. Chris steps between Zach’s legs and puts his hands on Zach’s waist, his right thumb rubbing circles through Zach’s shirt. His hands are warm, the way they were when they shook hello in the bar. 

“Let me--” Chris says. Instead of finishing his sentence, he leans in again and kisses Zach softly on the lips. 

“I like you,” he mutters. 

“You don’t even know me.” 

Chris kisses him again, shrugging into it. “Who cares?” 

Zach has to concede the point. He hesitates for a second, then he takes Chris’s hand. “Come on.”

He leads Chris through the dim apartment, down the hallway to his bedroom. The bed’s unmade, and ordinarily that would bother Zach, but tonight he doesn’t even think about it. They stop in the center of the room, turning to face each other. 

“You do this often?” Chris asks. Zach thinks he looks a bit nervous. 

“Does it matter?” 

“I guess not.” 

“Why, do you? Or do you just...I don’t know, sit around and wait for someone special?” 

Chris smiles. Behind it, something crosses his face, a tightness around his eyes that makes Zach feel shitty for asking, for the pretense that he’s doing anything but trying to needle Chris, this person he barely fucking knows. By rights, Chris should get mad, should ask him what the fuck his problem is, but he doesn’t. He just looks at Zach, his eyes somewhere far away. 

“Maybe both,” Chris says, like he’s actually considered the question at face value. 

Zach slides his hands up under the hem of Chris’s shirt. He feels good, fit but not cut, a little soft. Chris loops an arm around Zach’s waist then, pulls them flush together so sharply that it pushes a gust of breath out of Zach’s lungs, makes him feel dizzy and a little bit sick. 

Chris kisses him again, fitting their mouths together so carefully that it feels like the photonegative of what Zach did in the kitchen. Zach runs his tongue across Chris’s lips, acquiescent and tender this time as if he’s asking permission. Chris opens for him and sighs as Zach slides over the place where his lip meets his mouth. Zach wonders what it looks like there, if it’s flushed as pink as the outside or if it’s darker, slick and smooth. He wants to touch. He brings his fingers up and offers them to Chris, resting his head on Chris’s shoulder as Chris takes them in, sucking diligently. Zach tilts his head up and watches the muscles in Chris’s throat, thinks about that mouth on his dick and feels the pulse of redirected blood. He finds the biggest cord of muscle in Chris’s neck and tries to get his teeth around it, but ends up just sucking at it instead, gratified when it makes Chris moan around his fingers. Chris reaches up and grabs Zach’s wrist. “I...”

“Let’s go to bed,” Zach says. 

They strip off and Chris lies down on the bed, Zach taking a moment to turn on the lamp because he wants to see what he’s getting into. Chris is all smooth skin, a smattering of freckles. On the prurient side, he’s bigger than Zach expected. His dick is heavy-looking, half hard against his belly. Zach wanted Chris’s mouth before, but seeing this now he’s starting to change his mind. Maybe it’s better to see the shape that mouth takes with Chris’s dick down Zach’s throat. 

He trails his hand down the inside of Chris’s thigh, and Chris bends his knees and spreads further apart like he’s seen Zach looking and put two and two together. 

Zach looks from Chris’s dick to his face and back again. “This okay?” he asks. 

Chris swallows. “What, you mean you--oh. Yeah, yeah, that’s--” 

Okay, so maybe he’s not that quick on the uptake. There’s a part of Zach that wants to feel snide about that, but an even bigger part that wants to kiss him again, because his surprise is frankly pretty endearing. 

“You...you look good,” Zach says simply. “I want to make you feel good too.” The other side of the bluntness coin, and Chris could come back at him for being an asshole before, but he doesn’t.

Instead he blushes, a full-body rosiness that seems to turn up the wattage on his clumsy beauty and make the room glow. In retrospect, this may be the moment that Zach is lost, but ultimately he’ll decide that he doesn’t have the time for retrospectives anyway. He’ll only turn his attention back to the present, to making Chris do it again while they still can. 

Now, though, he does kiss Chris again. Then he crawls back down his body to settle between his legs, taking his dick in a careful hand and rubbing his thumb over the head. There’s a drop of fluid collecting there already, and he smears it around experimentally. Chris gasps, his hips jerking upwards just at that. Zach bites his lip to keep from smirking. It’s not easy, so he decides to occupy his mouth elsewhere. He takes Chris in, running the tip of his tongue over just the head. Chris’s hands are all over Zach right away, on his shoulders and in his hair, a little hesitant. 

Zach looks up, and already Chris’s face is promising that this strategy is going to pay off handsomely. His mouth is open in a pleasing O, his eyes closed. He looks reverent, and Zach hasn’t even gotten to the good stuff yet. 

He laughs to himself. Then he closes his eyes and takes Chris all the way down his throat. 

“Oh,” Chris gasps. “Oh, oh fuck--”

Zach takes a long, smooth breath through his nose. He’s mashed against the skin of Chris’s groin, hair tickling his nose. He can smell Chris’s skin, his sweat; he can feel a faint ache starting up in his jaw already, his spit leaking out around the base of Chris’s dick. His own dick’s getting hard, and Zach drops a hand down between his legs to grind against his palm and deploy the resulting moan against his mouthful of Chris. 

“Fuck, how do you do that?” 

Zach pulls off, watches with satisfaction as a spiderwebby thread of spit trails from his lips to the head of Chris’s dick. 

“Practice,” he says. 

He sinks back down again, then sets a rhythm, letting Chris fuck up into his mouth, licking over his head and teasing his slit. He pulls off altogether and moves lower, licking at Chris’s balls, moving lower until Chris twitches away. 

_Interesting_ , Zach thinks, but he doesn’t press. Plenty of time for that later, except for the fact that there’s not. He redoubles his efforts until Chris is writhing in his mouth. Zach presses down on Chris’s hips with the palms of his hands, pushing him against the mattress. Then he sinks down onto Chris’s dick one more time. His mouth is swimming with saliva and the faint taste of salt, and Chris moans like the sounds are being wrenched from some place deep inside. 

“I’m gonna...Zach, I’m--” 

Zach nods, hoping Chris can interpret that through the haze of stimuli. Then his hands tighten in Zach’s hair, and Chris is curling in on Zach reflexively, coming hard in spurts. Zach swallows it down, holds Chris’s softening dick gently in his mouth, lapping carefully at him. Finally, he pulls off. Chris has a hand over his face; he’s breathing hard, and Zach can see his chest rising and falling like he’s running. 

“You maybe do more of the second thing, huh?” Zach says. “The sitting around thing.” 

“Shut up,” Chris says. He paws at Zach’s shoulder. “Come up here.” 

Zach spreads out next to Chris on the bed. His eyes are heavy-lidded, and he’s still flushed and sweaty with orgasm. He looks...he looks beautiful, and it’s a punch to the gut. So, Zach kisses him, for what feels like a really long time. When he gets ahold of himself again he’s rolled on top, tangled his hands in Chris’s hair and kissed them both breathless. He’s also really, really hard and kind of thrusting unconsciously against Chris’s hip. 

“Um,” he says. “Sorry.” 

Chris laughs. “S’okay. What do you want?” 

“Like this,” Zach says. “I want to stay like this.” He turns Chris’s face back toward him, kisses him on the mouth again. “Touch me.” 

Chris swallows. He reaches down and wraps his hand around Zach, that big warm hand. Zach moans and drags his teeth along Chris’s collarbone, enjoying the soft hiss of discomfort it produces. They’re both sweaty, skin slipping against skin. 

“How...how do you like it?” Chris asks. 

“Go fast,” Zach says. “I’m pretty close.” 

Chris kind of hums at that, maybe a little self-satisfied, but that’s fine, that’s okay. Zach stops thinking, lets his thoughts drift. In the dark of his mind’s eye he can see a clock, looming over everything, numbers blaring red. There aren’t any hands, but he can hear it ticking. 

_Stop_ , he thinks, and he must make some sound because Chris hesitates, raising his head just a little. 

Zach shakes his head no. _No, not you, keep going please._ Chris does, mercifully. Zach can feel his orgasm building already, pleasure coiled thick in his gut and shifting like a snake. Chris kisses along his jaw, the fingers of one hand playing over Zach’s balls, rolling them softly as his other hand jacks Zach’s dick a little clumsily. But it’s good, so good, and Zach rolls back on top of him and wraps his whole arm around Chris’s head, cradling it in the crook of his elbow. When he comes his tongue is in Chris’s mouth again. 

“Fuck,” he says, afterwards. 

“Yeah,” Chris says. “That was--mmph.” 

“I’m going to take that as a positive.” 

“Dude, quit fishing. I was basically just humping your face.” 

Zach laughs. “You kind of were.” He runs a hand over Chris’s hip, into the mess of cooling spooge. “Ew. Here, stay like this. I’ll get a towel.” 

He rolls off the bed and goes into the bathroom, turning the faucet on. Nothing comes out. After a minute he hears a hiss way back in the pipe and the sink coughs up a sparse trickle that dribbles away to nothing before he can soak it up with the towel. Fear clutches at his stomach as intensely as pleasure did a moment ago. He goes back into the bedroom and tosses the towel at Chris. 

“Thanks,” Chris says. 

Zach doesn’t say anything, doesn’t get back in bed. Chris looks up at him querulously. 

“Zach?” 

“There’s no water,” Zach says. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, I just turned the fucking sink on and no fucking water came out.” 

Chris doesn’t say anything, just keeps cleaning himself off with the towel. Zach watches his face. Suddenly, he wants to crawl out of his skin, wants to yell, to make some fucking noise. This whole thing has been too goddamn quiet. Maybe the preacher screaming on TV has the right idea after all. He whips around, scanning the room, and before he can even register what he’s doing he’s crossing the room in two big steps, taking hold of the lamp with both hands and yanking, dashing it against the wall. It’s not a very satisfying crash, honestly; the shade ends up taking most of the impact and sends the lamp bouncing onto the carpet, the thick ceramic cracking into three big pieces. 

“Zach,” Chris says. 

Zach doesn’t answer. 

Chris gets up and scoots over to sit on the edge of the bed, from which vantage point he’s able to reach out and grab Zach’s hand. “Come back to bed,” he says. 

Zach looks sidelong at him. He looks worried. Not worried about the water, not worried in the stomach-churning way Zach is. He looks worried about _Zach._

“Don’t you want to go get your car?” 

“Jesus Christ,” Chris says. “No. Now get in bed.” 

Zach doesn’t know what to do. His anger has flared and gone out, and now he’s just an asshole with a broken lamp. “I don’t even know your last name,” he says. 

Chris sighs. “Which is apparently not a prerequisite for sucking my dick. It’s Pine, okay? Chris Pine. Now _get in._ ” 

He does, crawling over Chris Pine’s legs and rights the wadded-up bedding. “Here,” he says. “If you’re cold.” 

Chris climbs in next to him and pulls the comforter over them both. He holds out an arm. “Come on,” he says. “Bring it in.” Zach looks at Chris, and at the space between them, and then he slides into it, rests his head on Chris’s chest. “Quinto,” he says. 

“Huh?” 

“That’s my last name.” 

“Oh.” 

Breaking the lamp has rendered the room dark, the only illumination coming from the bathroom’s overhead light, which Zach didn’t bother to turn off. He doesn’t care, though. There’s a part of him that would be perfect happy sleeping with the light on the rest of the night, if only to have the opportunity to wake up and remind himself that there are, in fact, still lights with the capacity to shine. 

“Do you think it’s really going to happen?” 

“You already asked me that tonight,” Chris says. 

“I know.” 

“What do you want me to tell you?” 

“That it’s not,” Zach says. 

Chris pulls Zach close. Zach’s not sure, but he thinks Chris might press a kiss to his forehead, over the hair so he can’t really feel it. 

“Go to sleep,” Chris says.

***

When they wake up the next morning, the water’s back on. Zach’s not sure whether this makes him feel better or worse.

“Do you need a ride back to your car?” he asks as Chris gets out of the shower. 

Chris dries himself off and hangs up his towel. Zach tries not to be obvious about looking, but he can’t really help it. 

“Look, I don’t want to be weird,” Chris says. “But would you mind if I stayed?” 

Zach’s not sure what he means--for today, til the end. Now that he thinks about it, though, the idea of being alone in the apartment feels intolerably oppressive. He looks at Chris and shakes his head. “No,” he says. 

“Cool,” Chris says, smiling. “Do you want to go to the beach?” 

There’s nothing else to do, so Zach says yes. When Chris is dressed, they go into the kitchen. Zach pours them bowls of cereal. There’s only enough milk for one, so he gives it to Chris and pours a little water in his. They sit in the living room and eat in silence. Chris keeps looking at the television like he wants to turn it on, but he doesn’t. 

They get ready to go, and Zach realizes as he stands on the doorstep that he’s afraid to go outside. But the courtyard is quiet again. The baby’s not crying. Off in the distance he thinks he can hear sirens. 

“How much gas do you have?” Chris asks when they get out to the car. “I didn’t look last night.” 

“It’s almost full,” Zach says. 

“Good.” 

Zach gives him the keys again without thinking about it. 

Traffic is light, which is so noticeable in a city like Los Angeles as to be unsettling in and of itself. When they pull onto the freeway Zach finds himself wanting to make eye contact with the other drivers he passes, like they should acknowledge the circumstances somehow. He tries to look at their faces, to discern their expressions. Are they crying? Do they seem afraid? Where are they going? 

When they get to the beach, the parking lot is empty but for two other cars. Ordinarily Zach would be a little disappointed that someone else is here, but that assumes today is a normal day. Today, he’s just glad for the company, and from the way Chris looks at the cars he seems to be relieved too. 

“I was starting to feel like we were the only two people left,” Chris says. 

“Me too,” Zach says. “Why do you think it’s so quiet?” 

Chris doesn’t answer. He leads Zach across the weathered wooden boardwalk that connects the parking lot to the sand. There’s someone out in the water with a surfboard, and a lifeguard sitting in the guard tower. There’s a a flag flying, green for safe swimming conditions. 

_Well, at least there’s that,_ Zach thinks. 

It’s not a great beach day, overcast and windy. But they all seem to have agreed on a collective performance of the height of summer. Zach and Chris spread out towels, and Chris takes his shirt off, looks up at the sky. Zach keeps his sunglasses on. 

“We just need a couple beers,” Chris says. “It’d be perfect.” 

“How are you this calm?” 

“Do you want to have a continuous panic attack for the next day and half or so? Because you can if you want, but--”

“I mean, I think under the circumstances it might be understandable.” 

“I don’t know,” Chris says. “It’s funny. I just...I watched the news, I got upset, yeah. But then I kind of figured, fuck it. It’ll happen or it won’t. And in a way, I kind of find it...not comforting, that’s the wrong word, but...I’m glad it’s nothing we did, you know? I’m glad if it has to happen, that it’s out of our control.” 

Zach shakes his head. “If humans caused it, we could stop it,” he says. “And anyway, what good is it being self-satisfied about it if you’re dead?” 

“Hey, if I’m going to be dead, I might as well take what I can get.” He looks at Zach, biting his lip. “Can I tell you something?” 

“Sure,” Zach says. 

“Last night...I’d never done that before.” 

“What, hooked up with a strange guy from a bar?” 

Chris isn’t looking at Zach anymore. He’s taken up a stubby, salt-worn piece of driftwood and is drawing patterns in the sand. “Hooked up with a guy, period.” 

For some reason, Zach laughs at that. Then he can’t stop laughing, peals of it, ringing out over the grey beach. The lifeguard atop his tower turns around, but he’s too far away for Zach to see his face. “Figures my last two days on earth are going to double as some straight dude’s experiment.” 

“No, it--it wasn’t like that,” Chris says. 

Zach looks dubious. 

“No, come on, I swear. I...I don’t know. I mean, I knew I was into guys. I’d just never actually done anything about it.” 

“Like I said,” Zach drawls. 

“I’m not fucking straight,” Chris snaps, and something about his tone brings Zach up short. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” Chris adds. “We both got off, right?” 

“Sure,” Zach says. “I just...I’d have liked to know what I was getting into.” 

“You’re not _getting into_ anything. Besides, I meant what I said last night. I like you.” 

“You--”

“I swear to god, Zach, don’t tell me I don’t know who I like.” 

Zach picks at the towel, miniscule loops of terrycloth loosening under his fingers. 

“Would you like me if this was just a normal day?” he asks. 

“There’s no good way to answer that. I either sound like a jackass or like I’m lying.” 

Chris palms the piece of driftwood. He gets to his feet in one fluid motion and flings it toward the ocean like he’s skipping a stone. It’s too light, though, and it falls far short.

***

“Do you think we could see it? If the sky wasn’t cloudy, I mean.” Chris squints up into the white, shielding his eyes with a hand. “Does it look like a star til it gets close enough to hit?”

“I have no idea.” Zach runs his hands up and down his arms. “Do you wanna go? I think it’s getting colder out here.” 

The wind is definitely kicking up. The surfer went in a long time ago. At least Zach assumes he did, because they didn’t see him go. Maybe he swam out further, Zach thinks, turning the possibility over in his mind like a box he’s not sure he should open. Maybe he decided it was the lesser of two evils. He wonders if there isn’t something to that. 

But, no, the lifeguard’s still there. He’d have done something, wouldn’t he? 

Chris touches his shoulder, making him start. “Hey,” he says. “We going?” 

In the car on the way back, it could almost be a date. Day at the beach, stopping at a spot along the freeway for burgers. They actually try the latter, but an In-N-Out and a McDonalds are both closed, and then Chris gets worried about wasting gas if they spend too long driving around looking. 

“Why do you care about gas?” Zach asks, but Chris just shakes his head. 

“Seems prudent, don’t you think?” 

“I think if we were going to shift gears to survivalism, we should’ve at least started this morning. You know, instead of chilling at the beach for four hours so you could tell me the poignant story of how your dick in my mouth last night was the culmination of your...your voyage of self-discovery or whatever.” 

Chris makes a hard right into a parking lot and slams on the brakes. 

“What the fuck, dude!” Zach yelps. 

“You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?” 

The seatbelt has cut into Zach’s shoulder, and he reaches up into his sleeve and rubs the spot where it stings the worst. “Uh, yeah,” he says. “So I’ve been told. I was working on it, and then the whole end of the world thing happened.” 

Chris scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck,” he says. _“Fuck!”_ He pounds the steering wheel with both hands, the recoil sending him bouncing against the back of the seat. 

Everything’s quiet, deadly still. A red pickup skirts the far edge of the parking lot and Zach has the bizarre impulse to get out and flag it down. Chris is breathing heavily, dark half-moon patches of sweat under his arms. Zach lifts a hand and reaches for him, slowly, as if Chris is a large animal liable to rear, to trample. He rests his hand on Chris’s shoulder and turns his palm out to press the backs of his fingers against Chris’s cheek the way a mother checks for fever. 

“Hey,” Zach whispers. 

Chris closes his eyes, turns his face away toward the window. The red truck is gone now, around the corner of the Target. “Sorry,” Chris says. “I’m probably just hungry. I get...I get weird sometimes.” 

“It’s all right,” says Zach. “Do you want to go home?” 

Chris nods. “Yeah.” 

Back at his apartment, Zach makes Chris a peanut butter sandwich on freezer-burned wheat bread brought back to life in the toaster. Zach watches him as he wolfs it down. 

“Okay if I make myself another one of these?” Chris asks when he’s done. 

“Knock yourself out.” 

“So, I was thinking,” Chris says as he spreads Jif on another slice of bread. “Why _do_ you think it’s so quiet around here?” 

Zach shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe everyone’s like you, they all came to terms with their untimely demise and are chilling out waiting to get blown to smithereens.” 

“This is L.A., though. You really think people are just going to lay down and take that?”

“We are.” 

“What if...what if there was some kind of evacuation announcement? What if we just missed it?” Chris takes a bite of the sandwich. 

Zach shakes his head. “You said you were watching all the news coverage. And the bar--they had the TV on all day yesterday. If there was anything, we’d have seen it.” 

“Let’s watch TV,” Chris says, looking past Zach into the living room. “Just for a little bit. I want to see if there’s anything new.” 

“I don’t know what you think you’re going to see,” Zach says, but he follows Chris out of the kitchen anyway. 

He doesn’t see anything, in the end, because there’s nothing on. They scroll through all the channels; Zach even plays at fiddling with the cable box to make sure it’s plugged in, but no dice. There’s nothing being broadcast anymore. 

Chris stares at the TV for a long time, like he’s trying to discern a pattern to the static. Zach tenses for a repeat of the car episode from earlier, but it doesn’t come. Chris’s shoulders slump, and he falls back against the couch and closes his eyes.

"You can say you told me so if you want to," he says.

"I’m not that kind of asshole," Zach says.

He goes over to the couch and sits down heavily, letting gravity roll them toward one another so their thighs touch. He looks at Chris’s arm. There’s a crust of sand on the skin there, and Zach finds himself thinking how it might taste, thinking of anything but what isn’t on television.

“Maybe it’s the satellites,” Chris says, his voice hoarse. “Maybe--”

“Don’t,” Zach says. He reaches out and lays his hand on Chris’s arm. It’s warm, like he’s just come in from the sun, and the contact sends a charge through Zach.  


Chris turns and looks at Zach. He licks his lips. “Distract me,” he says. “Please. I don’t...I can’t think about it anymore.”

Zach nods. He moves over Chris on the couch, straddling his lap. He runs a thumb over Chris’s bottom lip, still moist and a little shiny from his tongue. 

“You do that all the time?” he asks. 

Chris nods. 

Zach kisses him. Slower this time, sweeter, the way Chris kissed him last night. Today feels so different somehow, like they’re two completely different people. Chris’s mouth is soft on Zach’s, minus the slight rasp of his predictably chapped lips. 

“Do they get sore?” Zach mutters. Chris nods, and Zach kisses him again, so gently that it’s barely a kiss at all, just the two of them breathing in the same space. “Poor Chris,” Zach says. 

Chris moans, shifting beneath Zach, scooting lower so that Zach’s pitched forward into the trough of his lap, right against the crotch of his jeans. Zach tilts his head to one side and finds a tender spot under Chris’s jaw to suck, Chris skimming his hands up and down Zach’s back. Zach grinds his hand against Chris, who’s pretty much hard already. Zach hums in appreciation, and Chris swallows. 

“Told you I wasn’t straight,” he says, a little shyly for all the bluster of his words. 

Zach smiles, but unlike last night, unlike earlier, he can’t seem to find a single spark of meanness in it. “Let’s go to the other room,” he says. 

They scare Harold off the bed as they come in. Zach prods the pieces of the lamp with his toe, but Chris nudges him and shakes his head slightly. _Don’t break the spell,_ he seems to say. Zach thinks he can work with that. 

They undress slowly, shoes and socks first because they’re the most awkward. They’re stymied by long pauses to kiss in between items of clothing until Zach, laughing, declares “Enough,” and sets about unbuttoning Chris’s jeans and yanking them down over his ass. He’s wearing briefs, the white cotton so Calvin Klein perfect that Zach has to laugh again. 

“What?” Chris says. 

“Nothing.” 

Zach divests himself of his own jeans and kicks them aside, kneeling on the bed and motioning for Chris to join him. They kiss again, tangled up in each other, sprawling onto the pillows. 

“What do you want?” Zach asks him. 

Chris has the sudden look of a kid told he can have anything in the toy shop. “I...I don’t know. What do you want?” 

Zach considers for a moment. “I want to show you something,” he says. “Here, lay on your stomach.” 

Chris chews on his lip for a second, like he’s not quite sure what he’s agreeing to. “Okay,” he says, and flips over onto his stomach obligingly. Zach grabs one of the pillows and arranges it beneath Chris’s hips. He trails a hand over his lower back and then pats at his inner thighs, nudging them apart and kneeling between them. 

“You ever done this before?” 

“Wait,” Chris says, sounding confused. “Are you--are you gonna fuck me?” 

Zach laughs softly at that, rubbing Chris’s back apologetically. “No,” he says. “I mean, we can if--no. Not right now. Here, just...lay your head down, okay?” 

There’s a pregnant pause, like Chris wants to say something else, but he doesn’t. He just rests his head on his folded arms and falls silent. Zach licks his lips and considers Chris’s ass. He remembers the first time someone did this to him--it was back in college;  
Zach had started hooking up with this senior who was, by all accounts, a complete asshole. Which on some level Zach had known, though that hadn’t seemed to make the inevitable unhappy ending any less wrenching. But before all that, there had been a night like this, freshman Zach lying prone and nervous, feeling some guy’s breath against his skin and waiting. 

He takes a deep breath and puts his hands on Chris, pulling his ass cheeks apart gently. Chris whimpers a little at just the touch of Zach’s hands, and when Zach shimmies down onto his stomach and breathes Chris’s whole body tenses. 

“Wait,” he says. 

“Mmhm?” 

“Are you sure you want to do this? Should I, like...should I take a shower?” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Zach says, smiling even though Chris can’t see him. 

“But--” 

“It’s fine,” Zach says, ducking in and licking. “See? You taste like the beach. You taste like...like sun.” 

“It was cloudy,” Chris says. “And sun doesn’t taste.” 

“Still.” 

“All this poetry just so you can lick my ass.” 

“Hey, I’m trying to do you a favor here,” Zach says. “Nobody should check out without getting a rimjob. In my humble opinion, of course.” With that, he leans down, spreads Chris as much as he can, and kisses his hole, the intimacy of the act sending a thrill through him despite the fact that he’s giving rather than receiving. 

Chris sobs out a breath. Zach glances up to see that he’s buried his face in the pillow, and he grins against Chris. He starts slowly and carefully, darting and teasing with his tongue, but Chris is still tense. He’s obviously way too preoccupied with where Zach’s face is and what he’s doing. Zach sighs and laughs to himself. Then he spreads Chris wide again and licks with the flat of his tongue this time, moving from just behind Chris’s balls to his tailbone and then back down again to lavish attention on his asshole. He circles, pressing inside and retreating. He notes with satisfaction that Chris has relaxed, melting into the bed with no sound but the huff of his breath and the occasional moan. 

Zach licks his lips. “Didn’t know it would feel like this, huh?” 

“Oh my god,” Chris says. “No.” 

“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.” He returns to his ministrations, fucking his tongue in and out of Chris until Chris is moaning in a steady stream of sound and humping the mattress rhythmically. Zach pulls back and rests his cheek on Chris’s ass like it’s a pillow. He’s breathing heavily. 

“Why’d you stop?” 

“I want to touch you,” Zach says. “Is that okay?” 

“Like...inside?” 

“Yeah.” 

Chris moans. “Fuck,” he says. “Okay, yeah. Do it.” 

Zach pats him on the back again. “You’re tensing up,” he says. “Don’t worry. It’s like my tongue; it’ll feel better than you think it should. But you need to relax first.” He thinks for a second. “Here, turn over,” he says. 

Chris does, and Zach clambers up the bed to kiss him. He feels Chris think about turning his head and shrugging away, but Zach cups his face in one hand, tender yet firm. He grabs Chris’s hand and guides it to his dick. 

“Feel that?” he says. “You did that.” 

“You...you liked it?” 

“Of course I liked it,” Zach says. “Do you like eating out girls?” 

Chris blushes at that. “Point,” he says. He keeps stroking Zach’s dick, inexpertly for sure but it still feels good, good enough that Zach spreads his legs to allow better access. 

“I said before, I like making you feel good.” 

“You like making guys feel good, you mean? Or _me_?” Chris is looking at the head of Zach’s dick, watching the way skin bunches around the glans on the upstroke.

Zach presses his lips together to keep back a moan. “Both,” he says. “I don’t know. You said you...liked me. I guess I like you too.” 

Chris smiles at that, a real Hollywood smile. All of a sudden, Zach’s chest tightens, and he wishes fervently to be able to take this story with him into the ensuing years, the tale of the two days he spent with Chris Pine, way back when. He’d trot it out at parties and no one would believe him. Stars, they’re just like us, they have big gay crises with unknown character actors and then disappear into the Hollywood Hills never to be seen again. It’s all a much better scenario than the one they’re working with, and it’s frankly pretty depressing. So Zach stops thinking. He kisses Chris again, right in the middle of that big smile, and for a split second he can see another future, one where Chris is his, and imagining _that_ is just so unfair as to be untenable. 

“Okay,” Zach says thickly. “I’m going to--” he gestures at the nightstand, leans over and grabs a bottle of lube. It’s old and kind of sticky, and truth be told it hasn’t been used for much over the last few months besides the occasional solo effort, though those mostly occur in the shower these days. 

Chris’s dick is hard against his stomach, and he jacks himself idly as he watches Zach fiddle with the crusty flip top of the bottle. “Uh, sorry,” Zach says. Finally he gets it open and squeezes it over his fingers with a lewd squelch. Chris swallows. 

“You still into this?” 

“No, yeah,” Chris says. “I am.” 

Zach settles back between Chris’s legs, bringing the bottle with him. He rests his hand palm down on Chris’s thigh, rubbing little circles with his thumb. He trails the other hand along his crack, feeling Chris shudder as he does so. 

“Is it cold?” he asks. 

“A little. It’s fine.” 

Zach runs his fingertips lightly over Chris’s hole. He’s pretty open already from Zach’s tongue. Zach slips a fingertip inside and Chris moans. 

“It feels funny.” 

“Does it hurt?” Zach looks up at Chris’s head; he’s shaking it against the pillow. 

“No, just weird,” he says. His voice sounds tight, breathless. 

“Sometimes it feels like that,” Zach says. “Tell me if it starts to hurt. You’re...you’re pretty relaxed already; I’m going to try another one. Sometimes just one feels weirder than two or three.” 

_“Three?”_

“Shh,” Zach says. “First things first, okay?” He slips a second finger in next to the first, moving them slowly in and out, not quite coming all the way free of Chris’s body. The lube and the slickness make wet, slurpy sounds, and they’re the only thing in the room besides their breathing. Zach thinks they should have put some music on. He presses deep inside Chris, reaching with his fingertips, and he knows he’s hit home when Chris arches his back and lets his mouth fall open. His dick twitches. 

“Oh my god,” he says. “Was that--” 

“Indeed it was,” Zach says. “Feel good?” 

“Yeah,” Chris says, laughing. “I’ve, uh, done this by myself before, but I could never get the angle right.” 

“It’s easier like this,” Zach says. “From down here, I mean.” He does it again, because he can and because he likes seeing Chris react so dramatically. The sight is rewarding. Zach hasn’t always been good at appreciating small victories, but he supposes now is the time to start. 

“Oh, fuck,” Chris says. “That’s really good.” 

The pleasure seems like enough to distract Chris from any remaining discomfort, so Zach happily goes to town on his ass. He’s never done this to someone who’s completely green the way Chris is, and he suddenly gets why that douchebag from CMU stuck around for so long, because watching and feeling and listening to someone discover this about themself is nothing short of intoxicating. Zach feels powerful; he feels like a king, but he feels tender, too, and that’s surprising. All he wants to do is keep making Chris feel good. He also wants to kiss him, but his face is regrettably far away. 

Before long, Chris is wriggling around on the bed, trying to meet Zach’s easy thrusts halfway. Zach’s wrist is starting to twinge, so he decides to go for broke, grazing Chris’s prostate as he reaches for his dick with the other hand, drawing it out with long slow strokes. He watches Chris’s face until Chris drapes his arm across his forehead like he can feel Zach looking. He makes a soft noise back in his throat and his dick twitches in Zach’s hand. 

“Oh,” Chris breathes. “Oh, please--” 

On impulse, Zach slips a third finger inside to join the first two, crooking them into Chris as deeply as they’ll go. Chris arches up off the bed, his chest flushed to match his mouth, and he comes and comes in long pulses over his belly. 

When he stops, Zach slides out of him and wipes his hand off carelessly on the comforter. He crawls up the bed and flops on his stomach next to Chris, brushing his arm aside and taking his face in both hands. He kisses his eyes, his cheeks, and finally his mouth, still slack with pleasure. 

“You looked...I wish you could see how you looked,” he says. “Chris--” 

Chris’s face is mottled dark pink, and he looks up at Zach through his lashes like it’s a little painful to do so. “Don’t be embarrassed,” Zach says. 

“I’m not,” Chris mutters. “I’ve just never...” He shakes his head. “Kiss me more,” he says. So Zach does. Eventually, Chris reaches down and takes Zach in his hand, and Zach whispers in his ear to do it slowly. He wants Chris to wring it out of him the way Zach did for him, but it’s all been too much tonight and Zach’s moaning into Chris’s mouth and spilling over his hand far too soon. 

They’re both a mess. They go into the bathroom and towel off, Chris perching on the closed seat of the toilet while Zach runs the bath. They sit in the greenish water for a long time, talking little, kissing intermittently until their skin prunes. Zach gets out first and offers Chris the last clean towel; his own is the one he usually uses to wash his face, patchy with dried soap, the terry flattened between diminishing clean spots in the week or so since he last did laundry. If Chris notices, he doesn’t say. And if he gets up late in the night and goes into the living room, if Zach hears the crackle of static, he doesn’t say anything about that. 

Zach stirs before dawn. Chris is awake already, sitting on the edge of the bed watching the light grey out behind the blinds. 

“I want to go outside,” he says. 

He stands and goes out of the bedroom, Zach pulling on a pair of boxers and following. Chris has opened the front door and is standing there on the threshold. Zach comes up behind him and contemplates slipping an arm around his waist, but Chris offers his hand instead. 

“We going out?” Zach asks. Chris shrugs. 

They step into the courtyard together. It’s quiet; but that’s normal for this time of the morning. There are birds starting up in the trees around them and the fountain in the center of the space is still broken, covered with a mat of dying algae. 

The sky is overcast and smoggy. A gloomy day, the kind you’d want to spend inside watching movies, which Zach doesn’t think actually sounds like such a bad way to spend the last day of your life. He supposes they should do something a little more Whitmanesque, though. 

“Maybe it’ll burn off,” Chris says, looking up. 

“Maybe.” 

“We should--can we go get my car?” 

They go out into the parking lot. Rosa’s dented Camry is sitting there, steadfastly leaking oil. Maybe they should go over there later. She lives in unit 6, and she gave Zach a beer once when he’d had a shitty day. Maybe he owes her a goodbye. He’s got a string of numbers in his phone; he probably owes them all goodbyes too, but he’s not sure how to start or if it even matters. 

Zach drives this time. Chris keeps looking at the gas gauge, but he doesn’t say anything. Zach wonders if he’s still thinking of running. The drive is quiet; as before they see a few cars out, circling parking lots, going somewhere or nowhere. It reminds Zach a little of going out on Christmas; there’s the overwhelming sense that everyone they see is making great haste to a very specific destination. Again he looks through the windows and windshields at their faces; again they reveal nothing. 

The bar, when they get there, is closed. Zach wonders what they ran out of first, if it was booze or nerve. He thinks of the owner’s wife, her shaky cigarettes with their pillars of ash. They haven’t bothered boarding up the windows; no spray-painted wards here. The door is ajar. Chris stares at it for awhile, like he’s thinking of going inside, but he just shakes his head and walks around the back of the building to where he left his car. 

When Zach sees it he gives a low whistle. The front passenger window is smashed, blueish glass piled up on the tan leather seat. Such a nice car, Zach thinks, surprised by the genuine regret he feels. Such a shame. They should’ve left his here instead. Chris makes a face at the ruined window when he thinks Zach’s not looking. When their eyes meet he lets his features fall back to neutral. 

“Sorry, man,” Zach offers. 

Chris shrugs. “I kinda figured something like this would happen,” he says. “I’m surprised it’s still here, to be honest.” He reaches out and runs his fingers over the paint. It’s a glossy black, waxed to the nines. He liked this car, Zach thinks. He took care of it. 

“My parents gave it to me for graduation,” Chris says. 

“Must be nice,” Zach says, before he can stop himself. 

“Fuck off.” There’s no venom in it, though. Chris just sounds tired. Around them the dawn’s come down to a steely morning, dappled lighter to the east. Zach thinks about what’s beyond the clouds and crosses his arms over his chest to keep from shivering. 

“Let’s go back,” Zach says. “I’ll make us some coffee.” 

He half expects Chris to vanish on the way. He keeps checking the rearview mirror. But Chris follows Zach dutifully and pulls up next to him in the lot when they get there. He’s in unit 4’s space, but Zach hasn’t seen that guy for awhile now so he doesn’t guess it matters. 

The apartment is dreary. Zach opens the blinds on the front window, but Chris goes over and closes them again without explanation. Zach doesn’t protest; he just turns the lights on and goes over to the pantry, takes out a bag of coffee and spoons it into a filter. It smells good, rich, and he closes his eyes and breathes. He smells something else then, and when he opens his eyes Chris is there, leaning against the counter. 

“Where are you from?” he asks. Zach knows what he’s really asking: why are you here, now? He doesn’t answer right away. Instead he drops the laden coffee filter into its little plastic basket and fills the carafe from the tap. He pours it into the machine and flicks the switch.

“Pittsburgh,” he says when the coffee’s brewing. “I’ve been here a few years, though. I moved out after college. My mom’s back east, never left. I’ve got a brother,” he volunteers. “He went back right away, to be with her. I was supposed to go too, but...I stayed.” 

“You stayed.” 

“Work,” Zach says. “I wait--I waited tables. And that stupid audition,” Zach says. “I thought...I don’t know. I kept hoping they were wrong. But anyway, yeah, I waited. I never have any fucking money so I kept putting off buying the tickets.” 

“The airports were crazy,” Chris says. “I saw on TV.” 

“Right, so I waited too late, and all the flights were booked or cancelled, and I was fucked.” 

“Did they freak?” 

“A little. I talked to Mom the other day, for a really long time. I think we’re mostly good. But it was so weird, like...every time you talk to someone. Is it the last time? It just--”

“It makes you not want to talk to anyone,” Chris says. 

“Exactly. So what about you? Why aren’t you up in...where was it?” 

“Wyoming. Jackson Hole.” 

“Wyoming, right. Why aren’t you with your family?” 

“We...we had a fight,” he says. “Awhile back. We hadn’t talked in a long time. My mom called, after the reports started coming out. She told me to forget everything, to come home. But I don’t know, I just...it had been too long. I told her I loved her,” he says. “I do, I love all of them. I just...I couldn’t.” 

“What was the fight about?” 

Chris shrugs. “Doesn’t matter now.” 

Zach doesn’t press. The coffeemaker hisses, the pot filling. When it’s done he pours them each a mug and they go over to the couch again. They curl up together without pretense. Chris rests his head on Zach’s shoulder. Zach sets his mug down on the coffee table and runs his fingers through Chris’s hair. 

“Thanks for staying with me,” he says. 

“Any time.” 

They stay like that for awhile, quiet. Zach finishes his coffee and holds Chris’s hand while he sips his. Zach watches his profile: encroaching stubble, the mostly-healed scab of a picked zit. He looks young like this, as young as Zach feels. 

“This is the worst first date ever,” Zach says. Chris smiles shyly at him.

“Or the best,” he says. “Look at us. Spent two nights together already. Plus it can’t be too awkward when you already know how it ends.” 

Zach swallows. But Chris is right, and the realization seems to clear something away inside him. He feels lighter than he can remember feeling in a long time, apocalypses notwithstanding. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” he says. 

Zach’s apartment complex is mediocre at best, but when he first scraped together enough savings to justify living alone he made a conscious decision to compromise on quality for the sake of location. He remembers his first trip out to L.A.: he was still in college, and he’d landed an audition with a tiny avant-gardeish theatre company for some summer festival, the details of which he never learned because he hadn’t gotten the part. 

The audition was on a Friday, and afterwards Zach had spent most of the weekend trying not to spend money, drinking black coffee at cafes, drinking harder stuff on the couch of the friends of Joe’s he’d stayed with. When he wasn’t drinking he’d walked everywhere, ignoring the locals’ looks of vague concern and their tendency to make a show of locking their car doors when they caught sight of him at intersections. It was the end of March and the weather was stereotypically lovely, air mild and perfumed with flowers, lemon blossoms and bright bougainvillea. Joe’s friends had an avocado tree that bore so much fruit they couldn’t possibly eat it all, letting leathery, oblong castoffs rot to husks on the ground. Zach had picked enough to fill a backpack and carted them back to Pittsburgh and eaten avocado on everything for two weeks afterwards, and found himself in love with Los Angeles in spite of everything. Once school was over and he’d moved for good, what he thought was love had rapidly revealed itself to be brassy, quickly-fading infatuation. But that was all right. Avocados still come cheap, even if Zach can never get the stubby tree he pots on his back patio to produce more than a single anemic fruit. The flowers still smell good in the spring. 

Anyway, he chooses his apartment complex not for the mod cons or the cleanish carpet but for the way the hills sweep up behind it, cloven only by smooth black asphalt curving up to cliffs overlooking the city. He likes to walk up there, run if he’s feeling especially ambitious or especially guilty. Casting can’t tell if they want him reedy or not, gay or not. He’s not out here, not the way it counts. He’d always figured he’d give it a shot with the playing field nice and even while he could still stand to do it, before the arrival of that hypothetical someone for whom omission would seem the gravest insult. At 26, it hasn’t even come close to happening, and now it never will. Now, the world is ending and Zach is going to take Chris on a walk up into the hills, one last time. 

The paved road sprouts a dusty vein of trail about halfway up. They drive to where the trail starts, because Zach’s not a sadist, but it’s not the easiest hike even if you cheat at the beginning and soon they’re both huffing and sweating. The clouds are thinning. Chris was right; they’ll burn off, and tonight when the stars come to meet them the sky will be clear. 

“I’m really out of shape,” Chris gasps, folding at the waist and bracing his hands on his quads. 

“What, you don’t have to stay in peak form for those action hero jobs?” 

Chris looks at him sideways. “What makes you think that’s even what I go for?” 

“Come on,” Zach says. “Look at you.” 

“Look at what?” 

“Just...” Zach waves his hand. “Brown hair, blue eyes. You’ve still kind of got a baby face. You look like you can get yourself pretty jacked if you want. Or maybe you’re more of a romcom kinda guy. Yeah, I can see that. Sensitive.” He’s being a dick again; he knows it. The words spill from him purulently before he can stop himself. There should be a dark kind of pleasure here, but Chris just looks bemused and the expression--on him--is unexpectedly cutting.

“Why are we talking about this?” Chris straightens and walks ahead, through the silvery grass. There are rattlesnakes out here sometimes, or there are supposed to be. Zach’s never seen one. 

Zach shrugs, even though Chris isn’t looking. They walk on in silence. They’re close to the top now, and this hasn’t gone the way Zach expected at all. As usual, though, he has only himself to blame.

“What’s the best thing you’ve done?” Chris asks after a moment. 

“What, like as an actor?” 

“As anything,” Chris says, half turning so Zach can see his profile. He smiles. “As Zach.” 

“Let me get back to you on that.” 

“Better hurry,” Chris says. “Not much time.” 

The wind is kicking up, proving Chris’s point as it bears his words away. Above them the sky is beginning to be impossibly blue.

“I’ll tell you at the top,” Zach says, and walks on. But when they get there the wind is blowing even harder, and Zach will have to yell to speak, and anyway, he’s pretty sure his answer would be dumb. 

“We should have brought something to plant,” Chris calls, kicking at a clod of dirt. 

“What?” 

“Plant. Like a tree. I don’t know, it seems fitting.” 

Zach goes over and stands behind him, resting his chin on Chris’s shoulder. The tenderness of the contact feels wrong after the way he spoke to Chris a minute ago, but if Chris is bothered by the incongruity he doesn’t let on. Zach, for his part, is too weak to care. 

“Seems pointless,” he says into Chris’s ear. Chris just shakes his head and stares out over the edge to the hot glitter of the city below. Zach follows his gaze. There’s a billow of white smoke off on the line of the horizon. Sometimes they burn crops, right? This time of year? Zach can’t remember. He thinks it sounds about right. The grind of acid in his stomach wants it to be. 

Chris reaches back for Zach’s arms and draws them around his waist.

***

“When’s it supposed to happen again?”

“Tonight. Like nine, I think.” 

“What time is it now?” 

“Three-thirty.” 

“Oh.” 

Chris bounces lightly on the bed. They’ve come back from their walk, sweat drying salty in the shade of Zach’s bedroom. Zach’s skin feels dusty and tight. 

“I’m going to shower,” he says. 

He goes into the bathroom and turns the water on. All he gets is a brief fizzing sound, a spit-spray from the shower head and a rusty splat into the tub. He frowns and walks back into the bedroom. Chris is spread out on the bed now, staring at the ceiling. His eyes flick over to Zach, but he doesn’t say anything. Zach lies down next to him, on his stomach. He rests his head sideways on the pillow and watches Chris blink beyond a ridge of white cotton. 

After what seems like a long time, Chris turns to face him. He looks a little haggard, Zach thinks. So does Zach, though, per the bathroom mirror. It’s okay. 

Zach shifts closer so they’re nose to nose. “Kiss me,” he says. 

Chris makes a pained noise. He tilts Zach’s face up with a finger under the chin and presses their lips together, moving his tongue along the jagged seam of Zach’s teeth. Zach lets his mouth fall open and shuts his eyes. Chris drapes an arm over Zach’s waist and pulls them together. His body feels so warm, like there’s heat coming off of him in gentle waves, and Zach wants to soak it up, wants to wedge himself against Chris until he can’t feel anything else. He fiddles with Chris’s fly. 

“Take your shirt off,” he says, and Chris half rises so he can comply. Zach undresses himself, yanking his jeans down and kicking them away off the foot of the bed. As soon as Chris is naked, Zach’s pulling him on top, tucking his arms beneath Chris’s body, hands trapped at his throat as if in prayer. 

Chris seems to get it, pressing his arms up against Zach’s and gripping his shoulders. “Hey,” he says. “Are you okay?” 

Zach shakes his head. There’s a bubble of hysterical laughter stuck in his throat like a bone and if it gets loose Zach’s not sure it’ll stop. His face is hot. Chris regards him with obvious worry; Zach’s eyes must be wild. What would he do if he was alone? Hide under the bed, maybe. Get blackout drunk and hide under the bed, in the closet, somewhere he can’t see. He thinks about Plath via Esther Greenwood, pilled out and slow and carving her own grave out from the cellar floor. He couldn’t do that out here. No cellar, and the earth’s too hard. 

“Zach?” 

Zach has the vague idea that he should run his fingers over Chris’s chest. In practice, it’s more like clawing. Chris tenses, and Zach can see that he wants to pull away, can see the moment when he decides not to. 

“Hey,” Chris says again, softly. “I’ve got you.” He doesn’t say that it’s going to be okay, because it isn’t and Zach isn’t and no matter what he says, Chris isn’t either. Zach’s eyes flood hot and he blinks, but the blur won’t clear out. Chris thumbs the hollow under his lower lashes and draws the wetness across Zach’s face. 

“Chris--” 

“Shh.” Chris takes Zach’s face in his hands and kisses him once, twice.

“Will you--” Zach bites his lip, shaking his head like Chris is the one asking the question. 

Chris brushes Zach’s hair back off his forehead. “What?” 

“Fuck me.” The words come out in a rush, and Zach can tell from Chris’s expression that it’s the last thing he expected. 

“I don’t...I mean, sure, but--wait, are you sure? Because--” 

“I want you to,” Zach says. “I need--” he shakes his head. He needs something, he needs to feel _something_ else. 

“I’ve never done it before, with a girl or anything. You have to tell me how.” 

“It’s not like it’s rocket science,” Zach says, with as much acid as he can muster. “And besides, you seem like a quick study.” His shift in tone seems to appease Chris; he runs a hand through his hair and huffs a sigh. 

“Okay,” he says, smiling shyly at Zach like they haven’t spent the last two days doing pretty much everything but. 

Zach feels better. Maybe it’s the animal appeal of sex, or something sweet and open in Chris’s face. Whatever it is, Zach feels the coil of his panic loosen just a fraction, enough for him to lean up and kiss Chris’s mouth, his cheek. Then he reaches under Chris to go for the drawer in the nightstand. He presses the bottle of lube into Chris’s hand. 

“First things first,” he says. He smiles at Chris and it takes him a beat too long to reciprocate. “Stop looking like I just asked you to kick a puppy.” 

“I’m not,” Chris says. “I just--you were freaking out a second ago, but...never mind. How are we doing this?” 

Zach stretches out on the bed again. “Come here,” he says. 

Chris does. Zach takes the hand holding the bottle, spreading Chris’s fingers out and inspecting them. “You have nice hands,” he says. He kisses each of Chris’s fingertips in turn, then flicks the bottle open and squeezes a thick blob of lube onto his index and middle fingers. He shoves lightly at Chris’s shoulder, climbing on top of him on the bed and slipping an arm around his neck. Chris holds his lubed hand awkwardly out to the side, but Zach grabs at his elbow and guides it back to his body, to the curve of his ass. 

“Touch me,” he says. Chris still looks worried, so Zach kisses him. A few minutes of that, Zach is gratified to learn, sees Chris’s breath coming in hot gasps and his dick hard against Zach’s belly. He seems abruptly to remember what he’s supposed to be doing then, letting his hands drift down. His clean hand cups Zach’s ass carefully and the hand with the lube drags cautiously along his crack. 

“Yeah, like that,” says Zach. 

“Tell me if I hurt you,” Chris says. 

“You won’t.” 

Based on the hesitant press of his fingers, Chris seems unconvinced. Zach spreads his legs wider, bracing himself on an arm and watching Chris’s face. He’s the picture of concentration, and Zach feels a rush of affection at the sight. Chris, he imagines, is the kind of person very concerned with doing right by people. He hasn’t exactly met a surfeit of people like that here in L.A. Again, he’s struck with regret that things are playing out like this, like sand draining from a goddamn hourglass, and not only because Zach really fucking enjoys being alive. 

Chris pushes inside of Zach, and Zach lets his eyes close. He focuses on how it feels because that’s easier, and something in your ass is sufficient to distract from all kinds of enormities. Zach’s grateful. 

“More,” he whispers. 

“You sure?” 

He nods, and Chris slides a second finger in, crooking and twisting them inside Zach experimentally. “You feel good,” he says. 

“You too,” Zach says. He smiles down at Chris. “Yeah, you feel really good. _Oh--_ ” Chris has blundered into the right angle, and Zach feels himself twitch between them.  
He lets his head drop between his shoulder blades so his forehead falls against Chris’s. 

“Feel it? Feel me opening up for you?” he asks. 

Chris nods, drawing in a breath and swallowing. Zach lowers himself against the length of Chris’s body, his cheek on Chris’s chest. He can smell skin and clean sweat, and yesterday Chris said sun doesn’t taste but Zach could swear it does. He licks at Chris’s nipple and Chris’s breath catches. All these tiny details, little tells Zach will never have time to figure out. Chris is moving in and out of him, slowly, almost reverently. His thumb rubs patterns on Zach’s skin, fluttery and distracting while his fingers are deep inside. Zach shifts with the pressure, his dick dragging against Chris’s stomach. Chris bucks up against him, his free hand gripping Zach’s hip for purchase, holding him steady. Chris hums at the friction, then sighs, his mouth falling open and his lashes dark against his cheeks. 

“Zach,” he says quietly. “Can I--” 

Zach nods. He takes hold of Chris’s wrist, and Chris slides gently out of him and moves with Zach as he turns over on his back. They’re face to face again, and all of a sudden it feels like too much. Zach can feel the panic start to rise. He hiccups a shallow breath, and though he looks away from Chris he can tell Chris gets it. He reaches for Zach, rests his big warm hand over Zach’s sternum like he’s feeling for the place where his heart drums in his chest. Zach thinks Chris could slot those fingers between his ribs and sink in, that he’d let him, that maybe that’s the way to go. 

“Please,” Zach says. He’s not even sure what he’s asking for now, but Chris nods at him anyway, as if it’s perfectly clear to him. 

“You have a condom?” he asks softly. 

_Oh._ Zach remembers. “I don’t...I don’t think that really matters, do you?” 

Chris makes a strange noise at that; could be a laugh, Zach guesses, but it feels a little too low-pitched and desperate. He lifts his hand to Chris’s cheek. “Are you good?” 

Chris shakes his head. “I don’t know anymore.” He finds the discarded bottle of lube, squeezes it into his hand and fists himself roughly. Zach can feel him line up, and then Chris looks up like he’s asking for permission. 

“Do it,” Zach says. “Come on, I need--” 

Chris gives a sob of pleasure as he pushes in, and the sound sends a jolt of desire lancing through Zach’s body. He moves on the bed, lifting at the hips and hooking his feet over the small of Chris’s back so he can take Chris deeper. 

“Oh god,” Chris says, stilling. “Wow, that’s...that’s so good. I...” He trails off, shaking his head and laughing breathlessly. Zach runs his hands down Chris’s arms and it’s electric. Chris shudders all over, deep inside him, and Zach’s breath catches. Chris settles on top of him so they’re nose to nose. Zach kisses him on the mouth and Chris smiles wide, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and one day he’d have had crows-feet and Zach would’ve run his fingers over them and said to Chris, remember? One day is a lost cause, though, so he does it now. Chris leans into his touch and braces his free hand on Zach’s shoulder, moving his hips just a fraction, just enough to make Zach moan for it. 

“Are you okay?” Chris asks. There’s a sloppy, fratty sort of undercurrent to his concern. Please be okay, because I really want to keep fucking you. Why that looks so good on him, Zach doesn’t know.

“You’re so hot like this,” he says. 

“You’re...” Chris shakes his head. “I don’t even know what you are. Amazing.” 

“Aw, baby. You say that to all the boys.” He stretches his legs out, running his hands down to the small of Chris’s back and clasping them like he can keep Chris here forever. 

Chris sighs out a long breath and begins to move, slow rolling thrusts that make Zach close his eyes and allow himself to be carried along like he’s on a river. Chris is making little noises, gripping Zach’s shoulders and grabbing the sheets and murmuring things, endearments and promises. And they’re all lies, really, so there’s no reason Zach shouldn’t contribute a few of his own. 

“This,” he gasps. “The best thing. It was this.” 

Chris looks up, bleary with sex, but then he gets it and he’s smiling again, briny and  
slick against Zach’s mouth. 

He moans. “I need to--” 

“Yeah, come on,” Zach says. “Harder.” He drops his hands to Chris’s ass, feeling the muscles flex and fire as he slides almost all the way out and then back in. He’s clumsier now, desire blunting his concentration, but Zach doesn’t take it personally, even when he blunders the angle and makes Zach wince. 

“Sorry,” Chris gasps. “You’re just so--oh, oh fuck, _Zach_ , I’m gonna come, I--”  
His words devolve into a wet, raw whine at Zach’s neck, and Zach can’t feel it when it happens but he imagines he can because it’s hotter that way, the thought of taking Chris deep inside him, taking in all of that love and wonder. The way he’d looked out at the grey sea and the way he wanted the sky to clear and the way he worried about Zach. 

_We should have planted something,_ Zach thinks. He takes himself in hand. Chris drives in deep one last time, stilling inside of him and mouthing Zach’s shoulder. He’s close; he bucks up against Chris’s belly once, twice, and when he comes he’s thinking of that stupid spindly avocado tree.

***

When it gets dark, they go back out into the courtyard again. Zach’s fridge is well nigh cleared out, but he finds a couple of skunky Heinekens in the back and they sit there on the front steps and drink them.

“We should stay out here,” Zach says. “Leave the door open, for Harold. So he’s not--.” 

“Yeah,” Chris says. “I get it.” 

Harold has vanished, secreted somewhere in the apartment the way he does every time Zach gets his suitcase out. Zach’s filled his bowl to the brim with food, just in case. 

“And if it’s gonna happen, I just want it to _happen,_ you know? I don’t want to be inside.” 

“Stop talking about it.” 

Zach scoots closer to Chris, so they’re touching shoulder to knee. He crosses his arm over Chris’s and clinks the necks of their bottles together in a half-assed toast. 

“Are you scared?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Chris says quietly. 

“Me too.” 

Chris sighs. He makes a broken-sounding noise, and rests his head on Zach’s shoulder. They sit there like that for awhile, until Chris sits bolt upright and then leaps to his feet, so that at first Zach thinks he’s seen something, heard something Zach hasn’t. 

“What? What is it?” 

“This is stupid,” Chris says. “We’re just sitting here. We should be doing something, we should be, like, running down the street or something.” He looks around wildly. “Put some music on,” he says. 

“What?” 

“You heard me. Put something on. I want--we should dance.” 

“You are fucking losing it, man.” 

Chris holds up his wrist. His watch is a little big and it slips around so the face droops toward the brick of the courtyard. “It’s 8:50,” he says. “Come dance with me for ten minutes. It’s the least you can do.” 

So Zach turns the stereo on and cranks the volume up, feeling vaguely bad for the neighbors if anyone’s still around. “What do I put on?” he calls. 

Chris swings into the doorway, hands on either side of the frame, leaning into the apartment with a look of barely-contained mania. “Please tell me you have Queen’s _Greatest Hits_ ,” he says. 

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?” Zach asks as they sway together, too slow for the music. There had been a spasmodic singalong to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which had seemed to somewhat assuage Chris’s need to rage against the dying of the light. But now they’re barely moving, Zach’s legs bumping up against Chris’s, cheek to cheek. 

“So what if I have,” Chris says. 

“So most people don’t spend a lot of time considering mood music for the apocalypse.” 

“Who says I spent a lot of time? Queen was pretty much a no-brainer.” 

“Really?” Zach asks. 

“Really.” He doesn’t elaborate. Zach closes his eyes and breathes. Chris is a little ripe; they both are, but it’s oddly fitting; their faces are wet, but that is too. 

There’s an intimacy to dying with someone, Zach decides. Unsurprisingly, at this point in his life it wasn’t something he had ever considered, but maybe that’s what the last two days have been about. If matter can neither be created nor destroyed, if their bodies will oxidize to powder minutes from now, then maybe they’ll go off into whatever comes next commingled somehow: cooked down to diamond or blown into the atmosphere, a handful of sand excavated by whoever or whatever wrangles Earth into submission next. As eternities go, Zach thinks, it isn’t half bad. 

_Don’t. Stop. Me. Now,_ sings Freddie Mercury. 

Zach kisses Chris, and the world lights up.


End file.
